With Boston’s Mayor having just announced new funding for the city’s arts community, a new report commissioned by The Boston Foundation and prepared by the consulting and research firm TDC examines the current state of Boston’s arts community in places it in the context of 10 other cities. “How Boston and Other American Cities Support and Sustain the Arts” finds that Boston had a very broad and deep arts community for a region of its size.
Steve's Blog
Posted on January 21, 2016 by Steve
From Malcom Gay at The Boston Globe:
Taking action to increase arts funding in the city of Boston, Mayor Martin J. Walsh is unveiling three arts-related programs with a combined budget of $1 million. As outlined in Tuesday night’s State of the City address at Symphony Hall, the programs will provide direct grants to individual artists, expand the city’s fledgling artist-in-residence program, and establish an artist resource desk at City Hall, which officials said would act as a central information hub for artists working in the city.
Posted on January 21, 2016 by Steve
In December 2015, the website Cuban Art News interviewed Ben Rodríguez-Cubeñas co-founder and board chair of the Cuban Artists Fund, as well as director of the Culpeper Arts and Culture program at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund about Cuban art and culture, US philanthropy in Cuba, and how Cuba-facing organizations are evolving in response to the changing sociopolitical landscape.
I’ve now taken [to Havana] two groups of foundations that are interested in Cuba. Some people are just visiting because they’re curious and want to see what’s going on without really having the intention of doing anything. We’re trying to do better screening, because everyone’s time is very valuable. And I think Cubans who are dealing with all this onslaught of people are also looking at how to decipher what’s real and what’s not.
Posted on January 19, 2016 by Steve
In Introducing Community Innovation Labs, an article from the latest issue of GIA Reader, Richard Evans and Karina Mangu-Ward from EmcArts describe a new approach to harvesting the power of the arts to unlock complex problems at the community level.
Posted on January 15, 2016 by Steve
By Megan O’Neil, writing for The Chronicle of Philanthropy:
Grant makers and nonprofits have a new resource to help boost their effectiveness when communities face major disasters like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. The Washington-based Center for Disaster Philanthropy, in conjunction with the Council of New Jersey Grantmakers, released on Thursday the Disaster Philanthropy Playbook, a resource of best practices and approaches for charities faced with responding to catastrophes. It includes information on community planning, rebuilding, legal services, housing, aiding vulnerable populations, and coordinating across local, state, and federal agencies.
Posted on January 14, 2016 by Steve
The Arts Education Funders Coalition (AEFC), supported by Grantmakers in the Arts, worked over the past 3 years to ensure that arts education was preserved and enhanced within the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESEA is the federal law that provides over $20 billion in funding to states, school districts, and schools to improve academic achievement and improve teacher and principal training and quality. This undertaking by the AEFC paid off when Congress recently passed, and the President signed into law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which reauthorizes ESEA, replacing No Child Left Behind.
Posted on January 14, 2016 by Steve
Partners for Sacred Places, a national nonprofit organization founded in 1989, has released Creating Spaces: Performing Artists in Sacred Spaces, a report of findings from the Three-City Arts Study that facilitates long-term, mutually beneficial space-sharing relationships between arts organizations — with inadequate or no home space — and houses of worship with space to share. The findings from each of the three cities (Austin, Baltimore, and Detroit) establish a significant amount of available space, the desire of sacred spaces to serve as a broader community asset, and their minimal concerns about artistic content and control. The findings of this study demonstrate a range of issues, challenges, and opportunities facing performing artists and clearly establish that these artists:
- overwhelmingly see a need for more performance, rehearsal, and administrative spaces;
- see a home space as critical to artistic development and community engagement; and
- feel that a historic sacred space could enhance the experience of their work.
Posted on January 14, 2016 by Steve
In a new "DataBrief" from Indiana University's Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), career outcomes for first-generation artists are examined to find out if they have success finding employment that is in line with their counterparts and if that employment is arts-related. This is a follow-up to SNAAP's previous examination of the challenges arts alumni face depending on whether their parents or close family members have already navigated a career in the arts.
Posted on January 13, 2016 by Steve
Ted Russell, Senior Program Officer at The James Irvine Foundation, has announced the release of a new report, Investing in Cultural Participation and Financial Sustainability, that evaluates the work from the Arts Regional Initiative:
In our recent posts, the Irvine Arts team has been exploring the ways nonprofits can expand arts engagement — to create meaningful experiences that bring forward the full public benefit of arts, and to also increase organizational sustainability for the future. One area that we have been particularly interested in has been finding ways to increase cultural participation and improve financial stability among arts organizations serving areas outside of major California arts centers. In 2009 we launched the second phase of the Arts Regional Initiative, a five-year partnership with 36 arts organizations in Southern California, the Central Valley, and the Central Coast. During that time, we provided $13.4 million in grants and technical assistance to support these goals. What did we learn from this work?
Posted on January 8, 2016 by Steve
Ben Cameron has just taken the position of president of the Jerome and Camargo Foundations, succeeding Cindy Gehrig, who held that position for 38 years. He begins his tenure with this open letter:
As we all know, much has changed in the arts and the United States arts landscape since these Foundations were created. Just as I have encouraged every arts organization to understand the value it brings to its community in the present day—regardless of whatever value it may have offered in the past—we at the Jerome Foundation are entering a period of self-scrutiny. We will be working in 2016 to understand, not only the value our programs have had and are having, but also the current and future needs of artists and arts organizations in Minnesota and New York City. In 2017, we will both be affirming our commitment to those past programs and priorities that will continue to be critical to future artistic vibrancy and health, while making final investments in those that we no longer intend to support. We will also be introducing new grants programs and business practices later that year, with the goal of establishing a clear and full profile by the end of 2018.